Nobel Prizes: Surprise, Triumph - and Controversy

Triumph -- and Controversy Eight new laureates are honored, and an overlooked scientist cries foul

Medicine

"Anybody who says we've got this problem licked is a fool or a knave or both." Microbiologist J. Michael Bishop was referring to the slow, almost imperceptible progress in the search for a cancer cure. So when Bishop, 53, and colleague Harold E. Varmus, 49, were awakened early last Monday with word that the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm had awarded them the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, both were startled. Bishop called the news "surreal" and Varmus insisted on verifying the information. Others were less surprised. Said Dr. David Baltimore of M.I.T.'s Whitehead Institute, who won in 1975 the...

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